


who are you, without me?

by performativezippers



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: 4x10 rewrite, Danvers Sisters, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-21
Updated: 2019-01-21
Packaged: 2019-10-14 02:51:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17500178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/performativezippers/pseuds/performativezippers
Summary: But all of that fades into the background – a series of useless, muted, unimportant noises – on this Wednesday.Because she’s saying, “I have to be mind-wiped too.” It’s a Wednesday and your sister is asking you to let her go. Forever.





	who are you, without me?

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't watched the show in ages, but I heard about 4x10. I think this could be a beautiful storyline/moment between the Danvers Sisters, but I don't trust the SG writers as far as I can throw them (and I'm weak in the arms). So here's this.
> 
>  
> 
> In the canon, Kara says "Who am I, without you?" but that's not the question.

There’s something particularly awful about Wednesdays. It was a Wednesday – well, as close to a Wednesday as it got on Krypton – when your parents put you in a pod and sent you to space and then everyone you knew died in a horrible explosion. It was a Wednesday when Alex took you to the beach and you saved that child, but Alex got hurt and you understood you could never use your powers again. It was a Wednesday when Jeremiah died the first time, and it was a Wednesday when Todd broke up with you, and when Professor Simon tried to get you to exchange sex for extra credit.

 

It was a Wednesday when Alex’s plane was going down. It was a Wednesday when Mon-El’s pod arrived, and a Wednesday when Alex broke up with Maggie and became the saddest version of herself that you’ve ever seen.

 

But all of that fades into the background – a series of useless, muted, unimportant noises – on this Wednesday.

 

Because she’s saying, “I have to be mind-wiped too.” It’s a Wednesday and your sister is asking you to let her go. Forever.

 

* * *

 

She makes what she thinks is a compelling argument. She has to protect you. She can’t quit because if the DEO turns fully evil, aliens won’t be safe. All the changes she and J’onn (and Maggie) made will be erased. Without her there, it’ll devolve back into the organization that tried to kill J’onn simply for existing. That tried to kill Jeremiah for having compassion. That tried to partner with Cadmus to experiment on aliens until they were worse than dead.

 

She’ll slip up, she says. She’s not reliable, she says.

 

And you say no, over and over again, but they aren’t listening. She isn’t listening. Just like always.

 

* * *

 

She’s the best big sister you can imagine – compassionate, caring, funny, protective, kind, fierce. But she’s also stubborn and stupid, sometimes. When it comes to you. Protecting you brings out a nearly manic side of her; she won’t listen to reason or let your bulletproof body jump in front of her fragile human one. Her skin tears against freaking _paper_ , but she’s still throwing herself in front of bombs and guns and military drones like you’re the one who is fragile.

 

Like your survival is the only thing that matters.

 

She finds herself to be dispensable.

 

You find that to be bullshit.

 

She’s the only thing that has ever really mattered to you. A couple years ago, you would have added _on this planet_. She’s the only thing that has ever really mattered to you on _this_ planet. But you’ve been to Argo City recently, and you’ve seen your mom, and you’ve made peace with Mon-El, and you know the statement to be true in its shortest and purest form.

  
She’s the only thing that has ever really mattered to you.

 

She’s the only thing.

 

Winn and James are your friends and Lena is so much and Cat was so much and J’onn is so much of what you’ve missed since Jeremiah died the first time, but Alex. Alex is the only thing that has ever really mattered to you.

  
Alex is not dispensable.

 

You aren’t you without Alex. You’re nothing without Alex. You’d be dead, taken prisoner, tortured, experimented on, turned evil, castigated, adrift, without her. You’d be dead without her, a hundred times over.

 

You’d be alone without her.

 

Alex is not dispensable. She’s your sister and that is not up for discussion.

 

* * *

 

You say no, over and over, but they don’t listen. She never listens, not when she thinks she’s found the most effective – by which she means most ridiculous, dramatic, batshit crazy – way to protect you.

 

You say no over and over again. The payoff isn’t worth the price. You won’t lose your sister to save your life. But all she hears is “save your life” and she won’t budge.

 

* * *

 

J’onn gives you both 12 hours to think about it.

 

You take a flight. You have to think. You consider going to the Fortress but that feels like too much. It’s so imposing and logical in there, and you know you’re going to spend the bulk of this 12 hours crying.

 

You end up on the top of a volcano on an uninhabited island, somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. You can hear the magma churning underneath you – a great welt in the earth weeping and screaming its pain. You feel the same way.

 

You weep and you scream along with it, for at least two of your 12 hours.

 

You fly down and down, then, tears in your eyes, and scoop up two large handfuls of glowing orange magma. It’s beautiful and molten and deadly and you love it.

 

It reminds you of Alex.

 

You fly back up to the lip of the crater and you sit, letting the magma slowly start to cool in your cupped hands. You close your eyes, and you let yourself imagine the future if J’onn does this. If Alex does this. If you let them do this.

 

* * *

 

Alex wouldn’t remember you. She says she would, that she’d remember having a sister but not that her sister is Supergirl, but you know that isn’t possible. The only way would be for her to forget that she has a sister at all.

 

She’d believe that she was an only child her whole life. J’onn would take the memories of you arriving, so she wouldn’t understand why her mom turned on her and started to treat her horribly. The shrill voice, the nagging, the disappointment, would swell out of nowhere. She would think it was her fault. She would try, her whole life, to be good enough again, like she was when she was a child. She would fail.

 

Her father would die and it would be her fault and she wouldn’t understand why.

  
She would carry that guilt around with her – close and hot and molten – for her entire life.

 

She’d lose all her high school friends. She’d remember whispers of “so weird” and “freak” and think they were directed at her. She’d become lonely, isolated, afraid of reaching out. She would think something was wrong with her. That she was incapable of emotional intimacy of any kind. They would all leave her and she would learn that no one ever stays around, because she won’t remember that you never left her side.

 

She would be miserable at home and at school and she wouldn’t even remember her own bedroom.

 

She would remember her teens as a foggy, murky, non-specific bleakness. A time when all of the good, all of the light, was leeched from her life, and she would have no idea why.

 

* * *

 

She’d go to college and excel in all her classes, but she’d still feel stupid. Like she couldn’t measure up to some inhuman standard, but she’d never understand why.

 

She wouldn’t make friends. She’d keep everyone at arm’s length. She’d feel impossibly lonely. She’d feel like that was permanent, like it couldn’t possibly be changed.

 

She’d lose her virginity to someone whose name she doesn’t even remember, because in fact you’re the one who introduced them. She’d feel dirty and disgusting and slutty, because in fact you’re the one who talked her out of those feelings.

 

She’d date him for six months, because she won’t remember you telling her she doesn’t have to date everyone who wants to date her.

 

She’d break his heart and she wouldn’t care at all for herself, but she’ll feel like a monster. She’ll wonder, forever, if that’s true. If she’s really a monster. She won’t ever understand why she hadn’t been able to want him the way he’d wanted her.

 

She’d push everyone away. She won’t love anyone. She won’t think she’s capable of love.

 

She’d get a cat. She’d love her cat. She’d name him Pluto because you wouldn’t be there to insist on Streaky. He’d be the most important part of her life for a year before he’d be hit by a car because you wouldn’t be there to save him.

 

She’d never get another pet. She won’t remember the nights of comfort, his warm body purring on her chest, lulling her to sleep. She’d just remember falling asleep on the couch, cold and alone and hateful.

 

* * *

 

She’d go to grad school, and she wouldn’t understand why she’s buckling under the pressure. She wouldn’t understand the toll this lie is taking, the toll your perfection is taking. She’d just know that – with all the privilege, preparation, and IQ in the world – she’s failing.

 

She’d fail, and she wouldn’t tell anyone. She wouldn’t call her mother, because her mother would be shrill and hateful and cruel and she wouldn’t understand why.

  
She’d sleep with men and she’d hate it and she’d feel disgusting after, and she’d know for a fact that she’s a monster.

 

* * *

 

She’ll be arrested. No one will come for her.

 

* * *

 

She’ll finally get her shit together through pure iron will. She’ll drop the MD but finish the PhD, but she won’t take real pleasure from it. That memory will be fake, and it’ll feel faded. Bleak. Like it’s just a placeholder for what should have been there. Just like everything that comes after it.

 

She’ll get a job at a biomedical firm. She’ll be a cog in a machine. She’ll be both bored and exhausted. The men she works with will doubt her – harass her and talk over her and disregard her – and she won’t be sure if she’s better than they could ever dream of being, or if they’re right.

 

She’s always been a disappointment, in the end, anyway. Weird, guilty, useless, frigid freak.

 

* * *

 

She won’t make friends. She won’t remember Winn, or James, or Lena, or Brainy.

 

Or even how much she hated Mon-El.

 

She won’t know J’onn.

 

She won’t know J’onn. J’onn has been her dad for the last six years and she won’t remember him.

 

She won’t remember that Jeremiah isn’t dead, and that’s one tiny thing you think might be a blessing.

 

But she won’t know J’onn. She won’t know what it’s like to be trusted, to be cared for, to be put first. She won’t know what it’s like to have someone say, my life is better because you’re in it. To have someone jump in front of bullet for her. To cry on her shoulder. To open their arms and invite her to cry on theirs.

 

She won’t know unconditional love. She won’t know chosen family. She will know that she’s a disappointment and that she’s not good enough and she won’t understand why and she won’t be happy. Not without him.

 

Not without you.

 

* * *

 

She won’t meet Maggie.

 

She won’t meet Maggie because they met at a crime scene and she thinks she’s a lab scientist. They met because of you, and she won’t remember you, so she won’t meet Maggie.

 

She won’t feel that thing swooping her stomach that every song is about. She won’t know she’s capable of feeling like that – of watching someone walk away without being glad they’re leaving.

 

She won’t think Maggie is so pretty she can’t breathe.

 

She won’t make a friend.

 

She won’t, in an act of breathless courage, spin her around and kiss her.

 

She won’t feel heartbreak. She’ll think she’s incapable of heartbreak. She’s a monster.

 

She won’t ever know what it’s like for someone to tell her that they don’t want to imagine their life without her in it. She’ll feel completely and utterly invisible. More dispensable than ever.

 

She won’t meet Maggie so Maggie will never come over to her apartment and kiss her senseless.

 

She won’t ever realize she’s gay.

 

She won’t ever be in love.

 

She won’t ever be happy; not like she was with Maggie. You’ve never seen her so happy like she was that year, and that will be ripped from her.

 

She won’t know what it’s like to come home to someone and have that be the best parts of both of their days. She won’t know what desire feels like. She won’t know what being loved feels like.

 

She won’t have been loved since she was fifteen and her dad died.

 

She won’t want kids because she’s a failure and a freak and incapable of human emotions.

 

She won’t meet Maggie and she won’t have kids and she won’t have J’onn and she won’t have friends and she won’t have another cat. And she won’t have you.

 

* * *

 

Myriad will take her and it won’t feel very different at all.

 

* * *

 

She’ll survive but she won’t really live. She’ll hate herself, and she’ll hold that feeling close to her heart. Molten and hot and horrible.

 

When the next alien attack comes, when the next deadly threat is unleashed, she’ll sacrifice herself without a thought. They’re will be a kid, or an old woman, or the woman from the lab she’ll stare at but never know why, and that person will be in trouble, and something in her bones will react. Some reflex J’onn hasn’t been able to wipe will rear up and she’ll jump in front of the bullet or the phaser or the bomb and she’ll let her fragile skin be torn to shreds.

 

She’ll sacrifice herself without a thought because she will believe she’s dispensable.

 

She always has, even when she had you to take care of. Even when she had Maggie to come home to.

 

But without you? Without Maggie? Without J’onn? Without having been truly and clearly happy since she was fourteen years old?

 

She’ll know, deep into her bones, that her life does not matter. Not like other people’s. Not like people who love and care and laugh and feel things.

 

Her life will be bleak and gray and out of focus, and you can see with crystal clarity that she’ll give it up in a heartbeat for someone who lives in color.

 

* * *

 

You open your eyes. The magma has cooled into porous, sharp, beautiful brown rock. You clench your fists, breaking the rock into dirt and dropping it back down into the volcano, where it will join its brothers and return to magma.

 

You stand up and you brush off your skirt and you fly home.

 

You practice your speech as you go, but only one line really sticks when you get there.

 

* * *

 

“Over my dead body.”

 

They gape at you, but you don’t care. You say it again. “Over my dead body.”

 

“Kara, I have to,” she tries, but you stop her.

 

She never listens to you, but her entire life is at stake.

 

You turn to J’onn. “Erase me, instead. Wipe my mind.”

 

They both stop, jarred to a halt.

 

“Erase Kara Danvers from me. I’ll go to Argo City. I won’t come back. I’ll be Kara Zor-El, only. Erase me from myself. But don’t touch Alex.”

 

“Kara, no.”

 

You’re insistent. You love J’onn. He’s the second most important person in your life, but Alex is the only thing that has ever mattered. You look him right in the eye and you tell him the truth. “I won’t let you touch her. I don’t want to, but I’ll hurt you if that’s what it takes to stop you.”

 

“Kara, we have to do this.”

 

You turn on her, the volcano spewing inside your veins. “I will not let you fucking _die_ for me, Alex. Don’t ask me to watch you die.” You voice is breaking and you’re crying again but your body is firmly between theirs.

 

You don’t want to, but you’ll hurt him if that’s what it takes to stop him.

 

Alex jerks back a little. “No, Kara, you’re the one whose life is at risk,” she tries to say, but you know better.

 

She won’t remember any of the things that make her life worth living.

 

It’s not that you’re conceited, but everything good in her life is attached to you. Just like everything good in yours is attached to her.

 

But you’re willing to risk your own life for her.

 

You don’t tell her that.

 

“I’ll be okay, Alex. I’ll go be with my mother, and my people.”

 

She’s blazing mad, now, and you wonder if she’s the one you’re going to have to hurt. “ _I’m_ your people,” she growls, but that’s a checkmate and she’s the only one who doesn’t know it.

 

“Yeah.” Your voice is softer than you mean, because you came here to win a battle but you can’t stop weeping. “You’re my people, and I’m yours. And I won’t let you die for me. Not again.”

 

“Kara, I would do anything to save you. It’s my job to save you.”

 

But the problem is that you know that. You’ve always known that. She’s proven that, over and over again. Every god damned day, she’s proven that. But not anymore.

 

You once said goodbye, flying Fort Rozz into space. And now it’s time to say goodbye again.

 

“I love you, Alex. I won’t let you forget who you are.”

 

“What about you,” she says, and it’s not quite a cry or a gasp but it’s close.

 

“I can be Kara Zor-El. That’s…she was a whole person, once. With my mom, and Argo, I can be her again. But, you, Alex…” You don’t know how to say what you saw, up on the lip of that volcano.

 

You don’t know how to tell her that her life will be bleak and gray and washed out and over too soon. That’s she’ll be miserable and alone and confused and that she’ll die like Pluto, alone in the dark, wet street.

 

“Without me, there’s no J’onn, Alex. There’s no DEO.” You take a shuddering breath. “You won’t…there won’t be Maggie, Alex. You’ll forget Maggie.”

 

She stills, then, her body going entirely stiff.

 

She hasn’t said, but you know that she’s still heartbroken. That she’s been writing letters. That she’s trying to gear herself up to beg to be back in Maggie’s life.

 

“It’s not just me,” you say softly. “You’ll lose your whole life, Alex. And I can’t that happen to you.”

 

You stiffen your spine then, and you stand like you’re Supergirl. Like you’re Kara, from the House of El. Daughter of Alura. “I won’t let it happen to you.”

 

“I can’t lose you.” She’s sobbing and it’s just like when she told you that she’d killed Astra.

 

Another memory whose loss might be a blessing, but you know it isn’t worth the cost.

 

“I was never meant to be here,” you tell her, but she shakes her head, stepping forward and grabbing you. She pulls you into her body and you can feel her shaking.

 

“Don’t leave me,” she whispers, and you don’t know what she means.

 

Don’t go to Argo City? Don’t erase her mind?

 

“I have to keep you safe,” you whisper.

 

“I don’t care if I’m safe,” she says, and you know it’s true.

 

“But I do.” You pull back enough to cup her face, careful to be gentle with her delicate little bones and thin layers of skin. “This would kill you, Alex. And if you die, I die.”

 

She rests her forehead against yours. “What do we do?” she whispers.

 

You exhale, long and pure.

 

She never listens, but today she did.

 

“We stop the bitch,” says a voice from behind you. You turn around faster than humanly possible, but by the time Alex has turned her head, you still haven’t processed who is standing there.

 

“We stop this crazy bitch, and we all get our lives back.”

 

It’s Cat, and Lena, and Lucy, and Vasquez. And Maggie. They’re all there, steady and determined and steadfast.

 

“I’ll disable the truth-seeker,” Lena volunteers.

 

“I’ll go up the military chain to discredit the Colonel,” Lucy says.

 

“I’ll cause distractions at the DEO.” Vasquez.

 

“I’ll make you out to be indispensable in the press,” Cat says, like it’s nothing. “Public opinion will be on our side. And I’ll gather all the dirt we need on her and on the president, just in case.”

 

“You can’t blackmail the president,” Alex says weakly, but everyone knows her heart isn’t in it.

 

Cat just raises one eyebrow. “Watch me, Agent Danvers.”

 

“I’ll be with you, Danvers,” Maggie says, and no one has to ask which Danvers she means. “I’ll keep you steady.”

 

You hear what she doesn’t say. You know that Maggie has made the same calculations you have.

 

You have both been erased before. You will not be erased again.

 

J’onn nods, and you nod, and, slowly, with something that looks like both love and disbelief, Alex nods.

 

She knows what it’s like to be loved, and to be put first, and for people to sacrifice themselves because they care about her. She knows about family.

 

Her life has color. It’s dark, sometimes. A horrible black pit of anger and violence. But it’s also vibrant with sticky buns and movie musicals and eye rolling in the lab and Hello, Sunshine t-shirts.

 

She knows what it’s like to be loved, so she nods.

 

She saves her own life.

 

And yours.

 

* * *

 

It’s a Wednesday but Alex is not going to erase you. You’re not going to erase yourself. Your friends are behind you, and you’re going to stop the crazy bitch and get your lives back.

 

With your sister.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading and being the best imaginary friends in the world.
> 
> Come visit me on my tumblr (performativezippers) and twitter (p_zippers) to learn useless things about my life, read my rants, and support my other work. Heart you.


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